Shashi Tharoor: The Evolution of a Tweeter

All fun has gone out of Shashi Tharoor's tweets. They've been cut down to size. All spontaneity vanished without a trace.

And he tweets soberly about having a great meeting with Ghelot!

What a fall was there my country men!

Or should i say, Rejoice, my countrymen, Mr Tharoor has evolved! and in so short a time!

Like they say, the more you learn to control your basic instincts, the more evolved you are.

But i miss those witty smart rejoinders :-(

That said, one must say that we are glad Mr. Tharoor is learning . Good to think he will survive.

My First Confession

How did your aadhya kumbasaaram (First Confession)go? asked my father. He was standing in front of the mirror, combing his hair, something which I loved watching. He was bald and beautiful, my father, with a less than half inch tuft of hair skirting the shining bald head at its base like a fading crescent moon. And Ichayan (as we called him) took ages combing it. Fascinating, the concentration with which his hand followed the comb as the latter went over and over again over the crescent.

It was good, I replied. I was almost six years old. As an after thought I made a confession in a conspiratorial voice. But my repentance was imperfect.

The comb stopped its monotonous activity for a second as Ichayan looked at me puzzled.

Imperfect?

Yes, I said looking up at him. In a very knowledgeable tone, I repeated what Sister Vincentia of the Nazareth Convent who prepared me for the First Communion taught me. There are the two types of repentance. Perfect repentance is when you feel contrite for having hurt the good God. The imperfect one is when you repent your sins for fear of hell.

And the lowering my voice, I told Ichayan I couldn’t feel sorry for hurting God. But I am scared of hell. It doesn’t matter if your repentance is perfect or imperfect so long as you don’t hide any sin.

Ichayan burst into one of his explosive laughs. The comb soon resumed its action. When it finally rested on the hair brush kept face up on the dressing table, the white opaque pyramid shaped old spice jar was opened and I watched, fascinated as he splashed the after shave lotion into his palm and then patted his cheek – chin area with it.

I love that smell I told him. Some more liquid was splashed on his palm and he patted my cheeks with that palm. I was delighted and forgot all about the imperfect repentance.

The next day was a Saturday. My first communion was to be on Sunday. I was pretty thrilled about that one free day between the First confession Friday and the Holy Communion Sunday. I had exciting plans like climbing trees, playing kili and taking part in the cricket match scheduled for evening. My role in the match was that of a stepney batsman for both the teams (comprising my siblings, cousins and a 'madras Swami' who was my father's business partner) and of the ball boy to pick up the ball when one of the batsmen managed to connect the bat and the ball well. I loved the way one of my brothers imitated Vizzy, the commentator and went into squeals of ecstasy when some one was bowled or someone hit a ‘six’.

Saturday dawned. After breakfast, I was about to run out with my brothers to play kili when amma called out to me and said Get ready. Let’s go to Nazareth Convent.
Crash!!! Down came my dreams for the day - like the twin towers.
But why? I am free today. Mild hysteria in the voice.
Get dressed quickly. Don’t argue.

I didn’t argue because my soul was clean after my First Confession and the next day was my Holy Communion. Dejected, I went with amma to the Nazareth Convent.

I saw amma talking to Sister Vincentia who was nodding vigourously. Then she seemed to place a consoling hand on amma’s elbow.

Amma then left, leaving me in the Nazareth convent.

“Molly, you Know God is good?’ asked Sister V.
“Yes.’ I said sulking.
“How good”
“Very Good’
“You know he loves you”
I nodded in agreement though I was not very sure at that moment. Surely a God who loves me wont let me down like this, demolishing all my dreams for the day. He must have known how much I wanted a break from Him and from the two weeks of rigorous catechism lessons at the Nazareth Convent.

‘Then why aren’t you sorry that you hurt him when you sinned?”

So that was it! Ichayan had let amma into my confession secret, which he had found hilarious – but which amma couldn’t.

“I don’t know. I can’t feel sorry. I don’t know why”. Those were days when I hadn’t learnt the art of telling white lies. A lie – black or white - is a lie, and Thou shall not lie, says one of the commandments.

Then Sister V launched into a litany of the good things God has given me - good parents, good brothers, good school, good friends, food to eat, and good dresses, gold ornaments, car, dog - - --. The list was endless and I must confess that I was beginning to get impressed.

And then she turned herself into an advocate for the divine creator, presenting proofs of his great love. Her voice changed. Her eyes turned upwards on and off. Sometimes they rolled at the evidence of divine love. But what touched me – really and truly – was the way they became moist when she plunged into a superb narration of the great love which made God send his son to the earth and the shabby manner in which humans treated him. She got explicit about the passion of Christ. She shuddered and wept at every stroke of the hammer which sent the horrendous nails deeper and deeper into Jesus’ palms, feet. Held spell bound by the master story telling, I too shuddered whenever she did.

At the end of her histrionics, I was in tears.

And then she moved in for the kill.

“You were one of them, Molly. One of those brutal soldiers who tortured Jesus. Every sin you committed gave extra force to the blows of the hammer, the pain of the crown of thorns. Think, Molly ,Think, what you have done to your Lord”

I dissolved into helpless tears and asked pardon of my Lord for hurting him so much - --

I Belong Here

Episode 1

The following conversations took place a decade back when I visited the US for the first time.

How do you live there? That was a lady from Kerala, long settled in the US. I was there last May. It’s so hot and sultry. Got rashes all over. My daughter fell sick with the heat, and had to be hospitalized. God I don’t know how you people live there.

(“Are we rats or worms who survive there?” ) I thought, thoroughly irritated.

But, with a plastic smile, I said: Well, we can’t all possibly kill ourselves, can we?

Then I caught sight of my brother glowering down at me. He called me aside and gave me a dressing down.

But you heard what she said, didn’t you?

You don’t have to sink that low. Well, I didn’t know what was so special about me, except that I was his sister, but I held my peace. One doesn’t usually argue with the first born in the family.


Episode 2

Are you planning to disappear here? (Ividei mungaan pogukayaano?)

I beg your pardon?

Ividei mungaan pogukayaano?

Why should I?

People from Asian countries do it all the time, you know. After sometime, you can get your papers regularized.

But why should I do it? My family is back home in India.

When your papers are ready, you can bring them over. A lot of people do it, you know.

I looked at him in utter disbelief.

We are well settled there, back in India. My husband has a job, I have a job and we are comfortable there.

But this is truly God’s own land. The standard of life this country offers you. The climate. The natural beauty. You must see the US in fall. The colours. Kerala landscape is monotonous in comparison.

I know, but the fact remains I don’t belong here.

That does not matter. Once you come here and settle down, you won’t want to go back.

Mebbe. But I see no desperate need to relocate. I’m quite happy in India.

He shook his head helplessly and shrugged his shoulders as though to say ‘Well, if a rat existence is what you want, it’s your funeral’

Happily, I didn’t have to listen to such stuff during my recent visit to the US. I’m not sure if that’s because our Indian Americans think India is a better place now or because I didn’t do much socializing in that crowd. Whatever the reason, these conversations upset me – still; when I think how insensitive people can be.

Also, it surprises me that educated people can think that there is only one path to happiness – driving pricey cars down superbly maintained roads and highways, living in a/c comfort, eating easily and cheaply available quality food imported from all over the world, wearing the best branded clothes always available on discount sales. True, this primrose path does lead to happiness. But there exists another narrow and potholed road which also leads to the same destination.

Tropical weather can be cruel at times. Mosquitoes can make life itchy. Sultry weather can make you feel dirty and tired as you travel on ill maintained public transport buses, or in autos which hurts your back as they descend and ascend out of broken roads. Poor waste management can be an eye (and nose) sore too.

But running away from it all – will that make me happy?
Or rather, will I run away and try to get illegal entry into a strange land because of the opportunities and super sterilised comfort it offers?

Maybe, I’d run away if this tropical sub- continent with all its drawbacks it did not offer me a decent livelihood.
Mebbe I’d run away if India was not a democracy.

Mebbe I’d run away if, by doing it, I could delete the reality that is India from my consciousness.

Mebbe I'd run away if, with all its discomforts, we did not celebrate life here.

As things stand, and at this stage in my life, I'd rather stay put here and not opt for comfortable uncertainties.

The moral of the story? Well, none. Was just sorting out to myself why I don’t quite fancy the idea of relocating to the US despite the openings to do it.

The Shashi Tharoor Twitter Issue.

My letter to the editor which was not good enough, i guess :-(.But why waste the effort. So here it is, whether it is good enough for the blogsphere or not :-)

Much can be said on both sides regarding the Shashi Tharoor Twitter issue.

One must remember that Mr. Tharoor is an Indian English writer and enjoys a very high level of comfort in the English language. It is the writer in him and his keen sense of humour that caused him to succumb to the temptation of making a humorous rejoinder to a query, by playing on the image evoked by the term ‘cattle class’. The Party should have taken this witticism in the spirit in which it was said and ignored it, instead of blowing it out of proportion.

On his part, Mr. Tharoor should remember that he is more than a writer now. He is the representative of the people whose sensibilities he should be careful not to offend. He is also a high profile Minister, the cynosure of media attention and the hope of young India which looks upon him as one of the new breed of politicians handpicked to give a makeover to the image of India as an emerging world power. The responsibilities on him as a politician, a leader, and a party man demand he develops a sense of political propriety rooted in an awareness of socially and culturally sensitive issues and of the culture of the political party which gave him a ticket.

There are many expressions in the English language - like pariah and coolie for examples- which are accepted words in the English language but hardly ever make their appearance in the Indian print media, though they are used freely outside India. It is the sensitivity of the scribes to the connotations and associations of these words in the Indian context that has caused these words to almost disappear from the public sphere in India.

Now that Mr. Tharoor has chosen a career in politics, he should take a lesson from this discretion shown by the journalists in the use of words for public consumption. He has to be politically correct always. It will do him good to learn the art of becoming a successful Indian politician. The manner in which he conducts himself as the member of the Congress party will decide his political future.

Gujarat: A Divided State

On September 8th, Metropolitan Magistrate Tamang’s report is made public. His findings about the encounter which killed Irshat and her friends are that it was a fake encounter. They were shot at short range and then the bodies left on the public road for all to see how Gujarat deals with terrorists (read Muslims?). The action of the police is suspected to be entrenched in a deep desire to please the BJP strongman Narendra Modi, and to boost his image as the defender and protector of the Hindu community.

On September 10th, Gujarat goes to polls and Narendra Modi registers a better show than the Congress.

Now what are we to make out from this? This has happend several times. The worse his record on human rights violations gets, the better Modi's chance of victory at the polls. The only interpretation for this fact is, Modi's brutal acts have the support of the majority of the people of Gujarat

Gujarat is a divided state. The people of Gujarat have lost faith in the concept of secularism as defined in the Constitution of India, which the BJP ridicules as ‘Pseudo secularism”. For the people of Gujarat, secularism as the average Indian understands it is a pseudo notion. The minorities have rights if the majority is generous enough to grant them those rights. The minority communities have right to existence only if the majority community so wills it.

The state of Gujarat is a scale model of what India would become if the BJP with its control strings in the hands of RSS gets a majority at the Centre, and rules India unhindered by coalition partners.

In the responses to my last post (on Rahul Gandhi), there were some views on choosing between fundamental rights and bread for all. Gujarat results makes me think that even a discussion on these lines is dangerous. If we are willing to give up any one of the fundamental rights, why not another at another point in time? And another and another?

In a democratic Nation-State, Fascism can be ‘encountered’ only by a tenacious faith in fundamental rights exercised through the ballot.

The Rahul Gandhi Phenomenon

I get the feeling that Rahul Gandhi will do better than his father. In the past five years, this reserved quiet scion of the Gandhi family who could have easily stepped into any position he liked, kept a low profile. Maybe, he is taking a leaf out of the Mahatma’s book by not plunging into politics till he has had experiential knowledge of what it is about.

And he is proving to be a clever politician. Yes. He is playing the Gandhi-Nehru card wherever and whenever he knows it’ll pay dividends. He seems determined to reclaim the Congress Party’s foothold in the Hindi heartland and in Southern India. He seems to have registered some success in this mission, if we are to go by the recent general elections.

I can well foresee the barrage of accusations that’ll jostle against each other in my blogsphere – accusations of me being an advocate of dynastic rule. Regarding that issue, my position is this. The son should not rise only because he is the father’s son. Or the grandmother’s grandson, or the great grandfather’s great grand son, or the great great grand father’s great great grandson. But if the son can rise because he is clever enough to turn his lineage to his advantage, and consequently to the advantage of his country, give him a chance. After all this is a democracy. We cannot deny an opportunity to a person simply because he is the son, grandson, great grandson and great great grandson of a particular family. And the Indian democracy does not have the history of having given a person with the above credentials a free hand to misuse the dynastic advantage to oppress the people. When these advantaged people overstep democratic limits, or fail to perform, the voter punishes him. That’s the tradition in our democracy.

So if a person is young and seems earnest and sensible , and is making every effort to familiarize himself with the huge complex reality called India, let us accept him. Let’s not cry foul simply because he is somebody’s somebody.

After all every human being has to be somebody’s somebody.

During the elections, the media was tom-tomming about his average academic records. To this I say, where is it written that one has to be an Albert Einstein to become the leader of a nation?

The Rahul Gandhi whom all of us dismissed as ineffective, is coming into his own. He is patient, training himself to perhaps lead the country one day, or just to lead the party. He is starting from where an Indian politician always should. From rural India. He is nurturing the party from the grass root level. The party which had lost its directions and was well on the way of becoming just another political outfit, might (let’s hope), under this person reinstate the ideology and values which it had been happily compromising for political expediency. The process is slow, painful and time and energy consuming - and Rahul Gandhi appears to have a sizeable repertoire of patience and energy. He seems to have that race winning quality of slowness and steadiness.

I do hope I am right when I say, if this son rises, it will not be a case of greatness thrust on him because he is born great – it’ll also be because he has achieved greatness.It could be a rare case of the confluence of all those three phenomena that Shakespeare spoke about.

Oh My Name! Sigh!

My last post on this subject was the outcome of a need to unload a burden I’d been carrying all my life. But this time I was provoked.

“Can you give me a sensible name that I can call you?” pleaded the delegate to whom I was introduced in my official capacity as Kochuthresiamma P.J. etc etc etc. She was not from my part of the world; so I understood her difficulty in getting her tongue around my name. But surely there was a more polite or less boorish way of expressing that difficulty.

“You can call me whatever suits you so long as you don’t call me names”. I tried humour to conceal my irritation.

The lady made me repeat my name several times and then appeared to strike upon the brilliant idea.
“Hey, can I call you Kochu?”
“Why not”, I replied returning her sweet smile with a sweeter one.

I’ve thought of changing my name officially, but my father used to get distressed every time I mentioned my intention. He thought my name was the most beautiful one in the whole world. I suppose if you are a Malayalee and a catholic, and know the history and etymology of the word you’d find music in my name – or else, my father had an extraordinary ear that could detect harmony in the worst of tongue twisters.

On a more practical note, he pointed out the hassles of changing the name. Thus it was, despite my yearning to get away from my name, I remained Kochuthresiamma p j all my life.

Since I have this capacity to step out of a situation and look at it and enjoy the situation in which I am the butt of the joke or the lifelong victim of a father’s fancy for a particular name, I have
come out quite unscathed by the embarrassment the name caused me on several occasions. The worst is what I have related in my earlier post on this. Close on heels comes the occasion when, the day I joined a particular college in Mumbai a little over a decade ago, I was introduced to the staff at the staff meeting which, my bad luck, was scheduled for the day. I was asked to attend the staff meeting by the Principal.
“You can meet the other teachers too”, she said.
My HOD took me to the hall where the meeting was to take place. Being a very punctual person, she was the first to be in the hall, with me along with her. Soon people started streaming in. Men and women, young and middle aged, all dressed to kill and looking very sophisticated and powdered and patched. This was a new experience for me who hadn’t, till then, served anywhere outside Kerala where teachers dress up in a very sober and businesslike manner when they come to teach. I looked around happily, charmed by the styles and sounds and perfumed smells of the elite working class of Mumbai who gathered in the room.

Then the Principal walked in.

“Before we start, let me introduce you to the new teacher”

She looked at me and beckoned to me to come forward. My heart sank. I wasn’t prepared for this formal introduction, or I’d have given the Principal some phonetic training.

“This is Dr. ----“ . Silence. I could feel my ears turning red. I was always one who hated attention.
“Will you tell them your name, please?” she entreated, looking at me sweetly, pleadingly.

I announced my name.

It made no sense to anyone except two people who looked at me and waved from where they sat. They were keralites. The others looked at each other as tho’ some alien creature had descended on them from some other galaxy.

“Thank you. I can deal with the rest of the details”, she said cheerfully. Big deal, I thought. One would think that the rest of my biodata included terms like Kalaripayatu, Angathari, and Verumkai - terms which she could handle with the greatest ease while my name was the only problem that she couldn’t digest!

And then came the parting shot. Just as I was about to leave the dais for my seat, she said “Just a minute Dr er er er - - - is there another name I can call you?”

Looking at my smiling face, none could have imagined how high the seismic rumblings inside me measured on the Richter scale. What the heck, I thought. I take trouble to learn the pronunciation of unfamiliar and difficult names of people. That’s basic decency. This head of the Institution should have done her homework and learnt to pronounce my name instead of making a song and dance about it.

“I have no other name”, I lied. Let her learn to pronounce my name, I thought angrily – but my face betrayed none of my feelings. It had a heavily sweetened smile on it.

“Oh”, she looked unhappy. Then brightening up she said, “What did you say your name was?”
I repeated.
She wagged her bobbed head like a little child who unexpectedly stumbled upon the extra terrestrial she wanted to meet desperately.
” Yes!” she declared triumphantly. “I’ll call you Kochu. That ok?” she asked, looking at me and beaming at the teachers who were watching this one minute drama which, to me, seemed to stretch out to eternity.

Thus, I was Kochu during the short period of over a year that I worked there. With my quaint name, an exotic aura surrounded me throughout my service there and I decided to bask in the feel good, privileged feeling it gave me. Make the best out of a bad situation, has always been my policy.

I can never cease to be grateful and appreciative of the CEO of an organization I worked for in Mumbai before I joined this college. He was a Bengali I think, and was the only one in the organization who called me Kochuthresiamma - that too with the greatest ease and perfect phonetic and syllabic accuracy. The others resorted to my pet name which I shared with them because I met them informally, unlike the fiasco introduction episode described earlier. Whenever the CEO gave me an unrealistic deadline, I’d honour it each time, no matter how hard or impossible. Such was the impact of calling me the way I should be called. Without any distortion, stumbling, ridiculing.

My name - no matter how terrible it is – is part of my identity, and respecting my name is respecting my identity.

I have a pair of twin nieces, almost identical but I’ve had no problem distinguishing one from the other. But for some reason I used to think of them not as individuals but as two in one – which, I suppose, they resented. There was a time when I used to bungle up their names and call one by the other’s name. At one point they decided enough was enough. They wouldn’t respond to my question if I addressed X as Y, and vice versa. They’d wait till I realized my mistake and corrected myself. Only then would they respond to me. That’s when their separate identities emerged for me, and my eyes were opened to the fact that the two are so different from each other, and each had an individuality of her own.

Yes, my name is part of me. No wonder it is said that remembering names and calling people by their correct names are so important in effective PR and HR management.

I hope all future parents, particularly Keralite parents who read this blog will realize that when you name your children, you are confering on them a factor that plays a major role in identity formation. Despite the unpronounceable name that I was given by him, I am so grateful to my father for sparing me such names as Shito (d/o or s/o of Shinu and Tommy), or BDP (Birth Day Present cos she was born on her father’s birthday) or all those terrible names that we mallus come up with.

My name at least has a history, geography, tradition and a cultural content to it.

The Many Indias - Haphazard Thoughts

I would not have touched this issue with a barge pole, but since the Indian Express has given it an editorial status, I feel I too can talk about the issue of a north south divide in India.

The Express pointed out that the headlines of national newspapers highlighted that the national films awards were bagged by the SOUTH, and raises the question if South and North are different countries.

My experience of living in many parts of India confirms that there is indeed such a divide in the minds of Indians, a fact which seeps through inevitably into the language of their daily parlance.

And there is animosity too – perhaps not with too serious consequences generally. The Shiv Sainik hostility towards the 'Southies' in the sixties and seventies and towards the 'Northies' in the present century, which translates into violent assault, is an isolated localised phenomenon.

When you look closely at the issue, certain nuances become visible. These complexities emerge in metros like, say, Mumbai. Mumbaikers don’t consider themselves North Indians, something which deep down in Kerala, I hadn’t realized. In Mumbai, I’ve had my head bitten off a couple of times for referring to Mumbaikers as North Indians. Mumbaikers are “West” Indians, a category with intelligence and sophistication superior to the rest of India. A slip of the tongue and you refer to them as East Indian, you’ll have your head broken into smithereens – for that is a category for with they have supreme contempt. So we have the North, South, and the West.

From the Kerala where I grew up, I formed the notion that all North Indians are cerebrally challenged, except the Bengalees for whom Mallus have some sneaking admiration. And so it is common to hear us Mallus trying to list out the points of similarities between the Mallu and the Bengalees – fish eating and rice eating habits, light colour of the saree women wear, intelligence, Marxism blah blah blah. My take on this issue is mallus and bongs are as different as two people can possibly be – neither for better nor worse.

Sorry for the digression. To return to the subject in hand - There was a time in my unenlightened youthful days when my friends and I earnestly believed that all ‘Northies’ were ‘Bhaiyyas’, which was a derogatory term used to dismissively speak of the inferior intelligence of North Indians who, we admitted, were fair and beautiful and - well that’s it. Nothing more. The term Bhaiyya as a belittling term was so ingrained in my mind that when my nieces and nephews, in all respect for him, added the word 'bhayya' to my son’s name (because they or somebody thought that chetan or angala was too naadan), I used to cringe inside and pray earnestly that he would not grow up to earn that name! Thank God, in my mid thirties, I was completely cured about my biased and stupid notions of graded intelligence among the Indians.

Within the southern states, there is this highly ethnocentric notion about the cerebral capacities of the denizens of the four states. Mallus are supremely contemptuous of the talmilians -‘Pandis’ as they call them. The term has a lot of negative connotations, mostly related to unintelligence, colour and lack of sophistication. Regarding the Kannadigas, we talk of all Gowdas as Goondas. I once heard a Mallu assert very authoritatively that the origin of the word Gowda is Goonda!! But there is a huge, unconcealed admiration for the Andhraites. I don’t know what the other southern states think of the Mallus, but I know, from a friend, that they are very wary of us. “If you see a Cobra and Mallu, kill the Mallu first" is a favourite maxim, said my Tamilian friend.

It was during my stint in Mumbai that I came to know that the women with whom I worked (from all parts of India to the North of the Vindhyas) had a fascination for South Cottons. Most of my saris were light printed cottons made in cotton mills in Gujarat. We get them in plenty in Kerala. But my Mumbai friends used to insist that they were “South cottons”. They’d nearly faint in sheer ecstasy when I wear village cottons. Wear a Kasavu sari(Travancore cotton, as they call it), you’ll have to wear an thank-you placard round your neck - or you’d tire your tongue out and weaken you muscles around the mouth expressing and smiling your gratitude for the tsunami of tributes showered on your sari - from the student community too. So the divide also exercises itself in the act of exoticising that strange region to the south of the Vindhyas where a strange species called the Madrasis live!

I remember a common sentiment expressed in Kerala among educated Malayalees in the sixties. South India should have been a different country – at least it should be part of a loose Indian federation where the Centre would have control only over the defense matters. They (? I’m not sure who) were not fair to Kerala, it was felt. It was a case of taxation without representation! The state of kerala gets hardly any representation in the Central government or a decent budget allotment, but it contributes heavily to the Central coffers through exports – don’t ask me how/what -just bits and pieces I have heard and remember.

I remember a very painful incident while working in a college in Mumbai. My very good friend – a Mumbaiker – fumed into the department, dumped her books and handbag on her table, whirled around and asked me:
“What is this, molly? Is it to be given according to the whims of the President?”
I had no clue as to what she was talking about. Seeing me blink with incomprehension she said
”MS Subhalakshmi is getting Baharat Ratna”
“Well deserved, don’t you think?” I asked sincerely.
“What do you mean? Why does she deserve it more that Bhimsen Jhoshi?”
I could have told her that it was not just her singing skill that won her that honour – but didn’t venture to, seeing how agitated she was.
“I’ll tell you why. The President is a South Indian”. !!!!!!!!!

I chose to hold my peace. And it took her a week to forgive me for KR Narayanan, the President from Kerala favouring a South Indian by bestowing on her the highest award in the country.

This type of stereotyped thinking and the animosity it generates are not peculiar to India alone. Russel listed this tendency under the category 'intellectual rubbish' (One Englishman is equal to five French). Modern theorist have written/continue to write libraries of complex, involved abstract theories in strange unpalatable language to establish that there are no distinguishing features that are exclusive to any one category of people. But it’ll take aeons before we humans are able to relate to each other outside the contexts of caste, creed, nationality, class, ideology, race and what not.

Ruminating on Blog Responses

It might be only a tiny storm in the teacup brewing in my blogspace (triggered off by my post Burqa War) but to me it was a revelation and a coming to terms with a certain truth which I would not have missed had I read the writings on the wall instead of playing the ostrich.

And the terrible truth is that Young India is divided on the issue of secularism.

One section of educated young men pooh poohing the very idea of secularism the way my peers and I understood and internalized it, is a matter for serious worry. To them, those secular values that shaped the weltanschauung of my peers have become an anachronism.

Wonder how this happened. The post independence generation to which I belong believed that all Indians – Hindus, Musselman, Christian, Jain and Buddhist – are my brothers and sisters who will someday live like a large happy family.

What went wrong?

The constitution? And we grew up thinking India has the most democratic constitution!

Today, no one is happy. Neither the majority nor the minorities.

The secularism we believed in was built on a ‘live and let live’ policy and respect for all religions. The constitution, we believed, would ensure an equal space for all religious groups in the polity of the nation and there would be no state interference in the religious practices so long as there is no violation of fundamental rights.

Also, Minority Rights and other reservation policies were looked upon as an arrangement to give equal opportunity to those who were outnumbered or downtrodden for centuries. It was a way of providing a level playing field for a diverse population in a democratic dispensation.

And we believed all this - we believed in the constitution and the well intentioned reservations. Sacrifices and making space after all is part of nation building. Looking back, I realize that we believed ‘cos those who taught us the history of India and the nature of its post independent dispensation in the high schools, taught us with passion in their voice and pride and stars in their eyes. Not surprising, given that they grew up in an atmosphere charged with patriotism and a faith in the all inclusive model of democracy fathered by the Mahatma.

Unfortunately, the socioeconomic changes post independence reshuffled the century old economic order, and the losers of this change among the majority group had no privileges to resort to. This led to resentment, which in turn put the minorities on the defensive, giving rise to a vicious circle of action and reaction in many parts of the country.

It must be admitted that the minorities seized upon the privileges bestowed on them constitutionally as inalienable rights, became very possessive about them and often stretched the privileges to the point of offending the majority community.

A vast oversimplification, I know, but I was only constructing a rough scenario to show where the Machiavellian politicians stepped in and exploited the communal situation to serve their megalomaniacal ends.

When and how it happened I do not know but all on a sudden we realized that these politicians had invaded the campuses and cast a magical spell on the youth. And thus began the beginning of the end of young India’s faith in the visions of the founding fathers.

And this is not all. Corruption entered and became the order of the day in the Indian polity. The mode of development created many a discontented groups in the margins. The political will to address the terrible economic inequality was conspicuous by its absence. This undesirable atmosphere vitiated by self seeking politicians is what today’s youngsters have inherited. Any wonder that cynicism should prevail with regard to secularism and all those values imbedded in the constitution of our nation? When we dreamed in the early sixties, the world, despite all its problems, lay before us like a land of dreams – ‘cos there were dream merchants selling idyllic visions passionately in schools, in media and in the homes. Today’s young India has the failure of those dreams as their experience of the young democracy, and for mentors, it has hardened criminals/ Machiavellian politicians, ever on the lookout for chelas whom they can exploit and use as pawns in the dirty power game. The youngsters grew up hearing from these anti social elements, stories about the delicious taste of power.

So what if power corrupts, they are not ashamed to ask.

I was surprised to read a comment which protested against the banning of politics in the campuses as it amounted to banning ‘progressive’ activities!!?? This, he argued, gave rise to communalism among the youth! As a teacher from Kerala where the educational institutions are the breeding ground for cantankerous and ruthless politicians, I strongly disagree with this statement. Of course, we have had a few shining stars among politicians who came from the youth wings of parties; but they are exceptions rather than the rule. How campus politics can be termed ‘progressive’ when we have known cases of brilliant students being moulded into hardened criminals and goondas and goonda kingpins by campus politics, I simply fail to understand.

A college in Kerala with a long tradition of having produced many illustrious sons to serve the country in the highest and important positions, has today the dubious honour of having produced a new breed of political goondas who, with their muscle power, assist politicians in their mission to acquire disproportionate assets. These goondas are groomed to break every law in the country, indulge in violence and murder for their political gurus in exchange for protection and asylum.

Islam Bashing.

Another distressing fact that emerges from the blog responses is Islam bashing. A cursory glance at the comments of the blog visitors of my post Burqua War will show what I mean. While I agree that the minorities in India often forget that they are privileged, I cannot fall in line with these Islam bashers. Their strategy is to point to the past. They quote history – selectively and bypass the power politics (clash of civilizations, as it is now finally and honestly christened) dating back from the Crusades continuing through the imperial rhetoric in which Islam was demonized and finally down to the present times when the imperial countries manipulated world affairs with the greatest ease to become the self styled arbitrators of the destiny of oil producing Islamic nations. These are realities that no one can wish or will away. One cannot isolate the origins of Islamic fundamentalism from these truths.

I think we should turn to history to learn how not to make the mistakes of the past. Let’s not turn to history to find sticks to beat any group.

I would say religious leaders of all groups have failed secular India. With each one baying for his pound of flesh I would say “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. The religion I follow very strictly teaches “Give to Ceaser what is Caesar’s”. It can’t be any different in other religions too.

The Agnostic Angst

And finally there is another category that has become vocal in the blogsphere– the atheists/agnostics. Most of them opt for it out of disgust for the religions that are polarizing the nation. To this category I’d say: Adopt a live and let live policy. Centuries have taught us that humans need God. Having said that, we should do everything in our power to create that felt need among our countrymen to build an India where Humans, Gods and the Godless can live in perfect harmony.

Jaswant Singh: Hero or Politician?

The truth is out. The beans are spilt by the dissidents.

While time owes it to the nation to set records straight, I wish it were done in a more honourable and statesmanlike manner.

Jaswant Singh waited to be thrown out of the party to open the can of worms. How much more dignified it would have been if he had walked out of the BJP after Godhra! Would he have let the cat out of the bag if he were not dumped by the party?

Jagjivan Ram did it once. On the eve of the election in which the nation passed its verdict on the Congress party, Mr. Ram walked out of the party, taking a high moral stance – after keeping quiet during the entire period of the Emergency and enjoying its fruits.

No heroes, these people.

Guess one cannot blame such “leaders”. Integrity and patriotism can only be expected when these “elected representatives” of the people are statesmen and not mere politicians.

Gone indeed are the days when a minister resigned owning responsibilities for his or his party's failures. This is the only way political parties can be forced to do that soul searching so necessary for self correction. In these times, when politics is a mere profession or a career, it’s only the naive who give up a ministerial berthe or positions of power on account of ideological differences with the party to which they belong, or in disagreement with actions/policies which violate fundamental human rights.

Incidentally, regarding all this noise about Advani having knowledge of the logistics of the exchange arrangements of a dangerous prisoner for passengers, what would the Congress have done had it been in power then? Conduct an Entebbe like rescue operation? Maybe the only course open to the government was to outsource the rescue operation to Israel. But then that would have pulled the rug from under the foreign policy of India.

The then BJP government could do nothing else. Terrorists were bargaining with the lives more than a hundred Indian citizens. What choice did the BJP government have? And I admire the courage shown by Jaswant Singh to go to Khandahar. What guarantee was there that the ruthless terrorists wouldn’t take him as a trump hostage?

I only wish that the physical courage that Mr. Singh showed going to Khandahar resurfaced again as moral courage post Godhra.

The moral of the story is the most clichéd of all truisms. The loyalty of elected representatives of the people should be to the country first, and only then to their party. And they should love their country above themselves.

We have become a cynical nation which no longer expects from our leaders statesmanship, honesty and dedication to the nation.

Can I Speak to Mr. Baxter?

I don’t know why we called him Pathan. His real name had nothing to do with it phonetically, orthographically or lexically. No did he have the tall sturdy built of that mountain breed. Our Pathan lived bang opposite our house in Ernakulam in the sixties, and he was a fat man, totally out of shape. I remember an episode when my friend came home to copy some notes she had missed. She waited in the verandah which was used as our study room. I went in to get the note book. Suddenly, I heard her shout AIYYOOO!! My mother and I ran to the verandah to find her with her little hand covering the eyes and her lips drawn back in disgust. “Aiyyeeh Aiyeeh” she kept saying.

“What happened Chithra”, asked my mother?

She pointed to Pathan’s house, and with the other hand still over the eyes, she said “A lady is standing there without her chatta (the upper garment the Kerala Christian women wear).

Amma & I looked across to see Pathan standing on his verandah, clothed only in a huge turkey towel around his waist, well oiled for a bath and swinging his arms.

I’ve never seen amma laugh so helplessly.

So, you can imagine what Pathan looked like. Perhaps, it was because of his awkward size and shape that we children were so uncharitable as to make him the butt of our jokes and object of pranks.

Pathan’s double storeyed house had identical long verandas on the ground and first floors and we could see them from all the rooms from that side of our house. Once, when my brothers were home for summer vacation, one of them came up with a bright idea. It was past 10 o clock at night and my parents were away in our native place, which meant that the telephone which was kept in their room was free for our use or misuse.

As per the plan, one of them picked up the receiver and gave Pathan’s number to the operator. We could hear his telephone ring. With the lights off in our room, all of us watched his house. His telephone was kept in the extreme end of the upper verandah. We watched excited and tense. The phone kept ringing and ringing. Then the lights came on in a room inside and the verandah. We saw the door to the verandah open and Pathan came out, looking comical as he tried to walk fast. He took up the phone and hollered into it.

“Hello hello araanathu? (Who is it?)

“Can I speak to Mr. Baxter?” said my brother in a highly sophisticated accent.

”Sarry. Wrong number”. With great delight, we watched him bang the phone and walk away muttering.

My brothers waited for him to close the door to the verandah, and then switch off the light in his room. They gave him enough time to get back into bed and called again. Again the phone rang for a long time, then lights were switched on, door was opened and Pathan walked again towards the phone.

“Can I speak to Baxter?” This was another brother who outdid the other in the accent he put on.
“I told you there is no Baxteru here. You have the wrong number”, he screamed into phone and, and hearing him from where we were, we siblings dissolved into silent laughter. I remember tears were streaming down my face in sheer ecstasy.

The poor guy went back to bed. And then, another brother took up the phone. He could hardly control giggling when he gave the number to the operator but was cool when he asked for Baxter.

This time, what Pathan said cannot be written here. Repeating what he said would be a violation of my undertaking as a blogger not to pollute the blogsphere with obscenities.

And we saw another figure appear at the door. It was Pathan’s son, his exact replica in size and shape but younger of course. Apparently he was disturbed by all the sounds and Pathan’s loud obscenities.

“Enna appa?” he shouted. Perhaps it was the silence of the night which exaggerated all the sounds. And those people had loud voices too.

“Some ****** is playing a prank on us. They are asking for some bloody (mildest version of the real word he used) Baxteru”.

“Keep the phone off the hook appa”.

“Yeah. That’s an idea” he said.

And thus came to an end a supremely entertaining session for us.

We repeated this a few more times. But once, after banging the phone down, he stood on the veranda for sometime, looking in our direction in the dark. My brothers then decided that it was time to call off this game.

Looking back, I wonder why he didn’t try tracing the call. Maybe he wasn’t aware it could be done – and I’m sure we too weren’t aware it could be done. Phones were a pretty new and rare thing in our part of the world in the early sixties. I shudder to think of the consequences if the calls were traced to our house, and the hiding that’d have followed!

Or maybe we wouldn’t have got that hiding. Maybe we’d have been let off with a warning only. My father too had a terrific sense of humour, and he too had had a couple of mild brushes with Pathan for the latter's habit of blasting the Suprabhatham from his radio early morning and waking up the entire neighbourhood.

Strange But True

It was in the early seventies that my cousin Joshi joined a college in Trichur for his Pre degree. My aunt and her second son Michael (Joshi’s elder brother) went to drop him at the college. All three were sad, ’cos that was the first time Joshi was leaving home. Also, there were fears and anxiety about ragging.

After putting his suitcases in his room and meeting the warden, aunt and Michael started to leave. Joshi walked them to the car, subdued.

“You’ll get over homesickness in two days time”, Michael told him.” After all Trichur is not far from Ernakulam”

Silently, Joshi nodded in agreement.

“I only hope they don’t rag him”, said my nervous aunt, as they reached the car. ”Joshi, if they do, just let us know. Papa will take care of it”

“Come on, Ma, stop worrying and making him nervous. This college is run by priests and ragging, if at all thre is, it will be very mild”

“But why should they rag at all?” asked my aunt, her voice slightly hysterical.

“Keep quiet ma and get into the car. Joshi, nobody is going to do anything to you. Just take ragging sportingly. OK?”

Joshi nodded sullenly, looking around at the senior students, some of whom were playing badminton while some watched, and some stood in groups talking. One group was looking at Joshi.

“Look at the guys on my left. They have been watching us for sometime. I’m sure they’ll pounce on me the minute you leave”

Aunty got really scared.

“Shall we speak to the warden” she asked. Her voice shaking.

“Stop it ma. Stop being so protective”, said Michael angrily. ”Joshi, be a man. I told you no one will harm you. All this is part of life”

“You can say that and go back to the safety of our home. I’m the one thrown to the wolves”. His eyes were moist.

Aunty was on the verge of tears.

Michael took her firmly by her elbow and put her in the front seat. He was about to close the door when he saw Joshi leaning forward to plant a kiss on his mother’s forehead. So Michael went around, got in behind the wheel. The goodbyes were over. Joshi shut the car door on his mother’s side and stood back.

Michael started the car abruptly to avoid any more emotional goodbyes and the car shot forward.

My aunt put her head out of the window to wave to Joshi, and then let out a terrible scream.

“Michel stop! Stop! They’ve already started ragging him. He’s running behind the car asking us to stop. They’ve pulled off his mundu and he is running with only his shirt on”.

Michael slammed the brakes and jumped out of the car and ran towards Joshi.”Aarada ninney shalyapeduthunnathu (Who the hell is troubling you?)

Joshi pushed him aside and rushed to the car.” Where are you going, Joshi?" shouted Michael running after him. "You cannot run away from trouble all the time. Go to them and get back your mundu”

“That’s what I’m going to do. Mundu, my mundu. It got caught in the car door and you drove away with it?”

The Cutlery Crisis

A post by wannabe, one of me favourite bloggers, took my mind to a somewhat similar episode in which the protagonist was my friend and colleague. I’ll call her Keralina in this post.

Keralina was one of a group of teachers selected to attend an all India conference on higher education in Ooty. Now, she was a hardcore non-vegetarian. By hardcore, I mean really really hardcore. She can have a complete vegetarian sadhya (Spread) and still feel incomplete in the absence of meat or fish.

By evening 5 0’clock she and the group (all men) from her little town where she worked, reached the venue of the conference which was a college in Ooty. Dinner was at 7.30, they were told.

After relaxing and freshening up, Keralina came down to the mess hall for dinner. There were separate tables laid out for the veggies and the non vegetarians. She stood for a moment beside a non veg table laid out for six people, surveying it. With great satisfaction she looked at the large oval dish in which big pieces of roasted chicken, garnished with fried onions and nuts, were aesthetically arranged. The dish stood out among the other dishes like a crown prince among lesser mortals, she thought. She was about pull out a chair and take her seat when she suddenly noticed that cutlery was also arranged around each plate.

Now, born and brought up in the heartland of rural Kerala, she had never used them, and was known for her tirade during her lectures against Indians imbibing these colonial habits (like eating with mini weapons) at the cost of sensible and healthier practices in our own land. To make matters worse, on her way to Ooty, she had been reading in the train an article on etiquette and table manners which claimed that awkwardness with cutlery is a dead give away that your breeding and sophistication need serious honing.

She was distressed. She had absolutely no inking as to how to deal with chicken with fork and knife. After all, why should she have gained that skill when God has given her expert fingers which can find its way into the smallest crevice in the boniest piece of chicken?

With a heavy heart, Keralina, poor girl, moved away towards the vegetarian section. Whatever may be her ideological position on this issue, she didn’t want her image to take a bashing, negotiating a piece of roast chicken clumsily with fork and knife. As she took the last seat at a long table laid out to accommodate 16 veggies(there were several non-veg tables with seating arrangements for 6 people at each), her friend who was already there told her that she was at the wrong table.

“The non vegs should go there”, she said pointing to the tables next to this single veg table.
“I am observing noyambu (abstinence) for a week”, she bluffed, feeling miserable.

And she joined them and took her spoon and stated her meal. The conversation revolved around noyambu, and the veggies were lost in admiration of Keralina, her discipline, piety - -

Half way thru the meal, Keralina looked at the non-veg table to see how her friends from her home town were managing with the cutlery. To her utter dismay, she found that the cutlery was untouched! All of them were attacking the large chunks of roasted chicken with their fingers!

Keralina nearly wept.

And almost screamed in sheer frustration when the mess manager came around to confirm the number and list of the vegetarians and non vegetarians. She couldn’t backtrack on her noyambu claim and so got listed in the vegetarian section for the whole duration of the conference!

The Burqa War

MANGALORE: The Sri Venkatarama Swamy (SVS) College in Bantwal has restricted a first year BCom student from attending the class till she conforms to the regulations of the college, which is not to display her religious identity, the headscarf. (Times of India)

This is a very sad development indeed. After all, this is not France or Australia or Canada but secular India where the citizens have come to take in their stride the differences in the attire of those belonging to various religious communities.

Don’t students belonging to all communities display symbols of religious identity? What about the Bindi? Or the scapular or the rosary? Why single out the head scarf or the Burqa alone?

There was a time in India when Christians (in Kerala) went to school/college in mundu and chatta, Hindus in their set mundu and Muslims with their headscarf. For these students who came to acquire learning, these differences in the dress were no issue. They represented the plurality that was our pride. How much India has moved away from this situation!

The saddest aspect of this event is that the protests originated from the students, the clearest of indications that the citizens of tomorrow have their minds poisoned by communalism.

The first on the list of priorities of an educational institution in a pluralistic society like India’s is to inculcate secular values – like respect for other religions which includes tolerance and acceptance of religious markers. An institution that tries to throw a wedge between communities is unfit to be in the field of education, where religious tolerance, harmonious existence, respect for other religions and respect for differences should be held up as the highest values of civilization.

It is significant that this is happening in Karnataka, a state ruled by the BJP. Funny, how the party has not learnt its lessons after the drubbing it got at the hustings. The party can start packing up its bags in Karnataka after its shameful sexist and communal track record. The assault on women by lumpen elements of the communal outfits that mushroom and flourish under the BJP umbrella and the unofficial fatwa issued against people from the majority community who interact with the minority, are events which are still green in the minds of the electorate.

It becomes exceedingly difficult to understand this regressive movement in India which facilitated the rise of a communal party, all the way to New Delhi. The anti Muslim posture of the party – is it a political necessity or a genuinely ideological position? Or is it a type of fascism that infects the narrow mind which draws its identity from a narrow cultural and religious context? Or a combination of all these? Academia is replete with attempts to locate the issue in the historical site but speculations have given rise to theories and theories without credible answers.

Or

Is it a reaction to globalization inherent in which is the possibility of eventual loss of identities of religious groups? Like the last convulsions of a dying animal? Can the religious activism across the world- of all religions- be explained in these terms?

Can’t help thinking about John Lenon’s Imagine.

Back to the issue. the brainstorming of the BJP which just concluded in Simla is causing anxious tremors among the peace loving citizens of this country. Fascist voices are drowning those of the moderates in the party. Political strategies are being spelt out to regain power from where the party can position itself to launch assault on differences.

***

Below is given the rest of the news item from TOI.


The student Aysha Asmin, after objections from saffron-leaning students, was told by the college management not to wear the headscarf, which she started wearing after the college had prevented her from wearing the burqa.

Aysha has not been attending the classes from past 12 days. Trouble started after the college elections. She alleged that college president Bharath started heckling her for wearing a scarf saying that they too would come wearing a saffron scarf.

"He was taken aback when I said I don't mind. I don't even mind wearing a saffron scarf", Aysha told TOI. After this, harassment continued, but Aysha was stoic till it reached a flash point when the principal told her not to attend classes.

Aysha's father clarifies that he admitted his daughter to the college only after clarifying that there would be no issue for wearing a burqa in the college with a lecturer.

The Jinnah Fiasco?

Of late, the BJP heavy weights have been flirting with the idea of Jinnah - Advani, a couple of years back and Jaswant Singh now.

Curious, when you consider that the man who systematically whipped up anti Muslim sentiments in India through the famous ( or infamous) Rath Yathra, and Singh, a senior minister and stalwart of the BJP Govt, should attempt to recast history (official Indian version) by foregrounding the ‘secular’ credentials of the architect of Pakistan.

The obvious strategy of these senior BJP leaders appears to be the adoption of the policy of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. And by befriending him (enemy’s enemy), his friends will become my friends.

Thus, the glorification/secularization of Jinnah is a double kill: the Nehru dynasty (read Congress party of India) is demonized and the Muslim voter in India, it is hoped, will be gratified.

Advani was let off lightly with a rap on the knuckles. Perhaps Jaswant Singh thought he too could get away lightly. But it was not to be. His punishment did not stop with the rap. He was rusticated.

Why was he thrown out so unceremoniously?

The obvious answer is the arm twisting of the party leaders by the RSS.

All this is just stating the obvious and, I fear, I am oversimplifying some complex undercurrents. I am sure there is more to it than meets the eye but I don’t have the insight of a political pundit.

But an issue which baffles me is how, across the parties, people are going hammer and tongs after Jaswant Singh. Some Kerala politician was telling the media that Jaswant Singh should be tried for sedition!!?? For tainting the hallowed names of Gandhiji, Nehru, and casting aspersions on the Freedom Movement.

And Narendra Modi has banned the book in Gujarat!

Oh, come on now. India is a democratic state.

And nobody has proprietorship over history. History is what historians write, and historians write how they have understood the past. They see the past sometimes as they wish to see it, or sometimes as they are conditioned to see it. Pakistan and India do not have the same views on the Freedom movement and the Partition. So where does the truth lie?

History is not sacrosanct. Balzac, I think, it was who said that history is a pack of official lies.

So why al this banning and sedition charges in a democracy, all in the name of an academic pursuit?

Truth is like a multifaceted diamond, said Gandhi. The search for it will never end.

Whether the secular Jinnah is Jaswant Singh’s discovery of truth or his strategy with a hidden agenda, he can spend the rest of his life comfortably, harvesting the yield from a book which is bound to go into several reprints both in India and Pakistan.

He’ll survive without the BJP.

The Prince and the Pauper: The President of India on Mumbai Slums

The New Indian Express, Aug 19, 2009 carried a couple of news items which were disturbingly similar. In the NATION page 7 it says

PREZ CALL FOR URGENT STEPS TO REMOVE MUMBAI SLUMS.

President Prathibha Patil on Tuesday called upon Mumbai civic authorities to urgently tackle the problems of slums in the city. She said that the sprawling slums of Mumbai, which house nearly 13 million people (emphasis mine), presented a sad picture especially when they were surrounding posh multi storied buildings.

Now, I didn’t see the rest of the speech tho’ I tried locating it on the net. So this could be a case of quoted out of context. Having said that, I’d like to look at this statement of the first citizen of a nation of more than a billion people.

The implications of her statement are not very clear. Does a sad picture mean an eyesore that is aesthetically offensive, spoiling the appearance of the surrounding posh multi storied buildings?

I am not being cynical. What put this idea into my mind is another news item in the same paper in the back cover Sports page:

CWG: NEW DELHI TO HIDE SLUMS

New Delhi is to hide the city’s poor during the 2010 Commonwealth games by erecting bamboo ‘curtains’ around their squalid shanty homes, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The games, the Telegraph says, was supposed to be India’s moment to show off its rapidly rising wealth and banish memories of a country once synonymous with chronic poverty.

New Delhi is littered with makeshift slums that house the millions of migrants who pour into the city in search of work from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Their inhabitants are seen naked at the roadsides washing at stand pipes or defecating astride open sewers.

Officials had planned to shift their settlements to the outskirts of the city so the city that the television viewers and visitors see is restricted to the capital’s gleaming new metro system and world class airport, and its smart new roads, pavements and streetlights. But now they fear they could not complete the resettling work and had opted to hide the problem instead.

One official said the govt was so desperate to clean up the city it is preparing to offer free rickshaws and retraining courses to those whose jobs clutter the pavements.

The most positive part of the second news item is that the government is thinking of only hiding the problem and not repeating a Turkman Gate of the emergency days here!

The two news items coming together on the same day reflect the thinking in the corridors of power. Once, the BJP Govt. at the centre carried out a frenzied campaign of India Shining but was thrown out of power by that part of India which did not shine.

The President’s remarks, I feel should not have been made in such a vague manner that it lends itself to ever so many interpretations.

This sight is not a matter of pride and the scenario should change, she went on to say. The report in the paper did not say anything about her concern for the 13million who live in the slums. Her words sounded like an embarrassed echo of the observations of officials of New Delhi from when she came.

The long and short of it is, the government of India, mesmerized by India Inc., finds the millions who have come from the villages to the cities in order to keep their body and soul together an embarrassment only – something to be swept under the carpet, while projecting to the world the image of a country with a quality of life enjoyed by a minuscule number of people in the country.

President Prathibha Patil on Tuesday called upon Mumbai civic authorities to urgently tackle the problems of slums in the city: She sounds so casual and callous. Did she come down from Delhi with a package for slum dwellers which will enable them to pack up and leave Mumbai and live comfortably else where for the rest of their lives? How she has trivialized the huge human problem that exists in the form of slums.

You might ask: What quality of life do these slum dwellers have in the cities.

I am ashamed to say that it was during my stay in Mumbai for six years that I realized that the slum dwellers are of the same material that I am made of. My maid’s children are intelligent and she wanted to send then to English medium schools so that they will have a better quality of life than she. She works hard to achieve that. She too chaperons her girls when they go for the Dandya. There was yet another help that I had who worked and continues to work herself to death to pay the rent of 1000/ per month for a tiny room, to feed her two children and to send them to school. And I discovered that they celebrated life much more than I did. They had that spring of optimism in their gait and stars in their eyes when they spoke of the next generation.

It is these dreams that the President of India and the officials in New Delhi do not see when they ‘other’ these human beings who litter the pavements of the metro. If the civic authorities pack them off without providing for a proper alternative income, they will be guilty of a heinous crime of a massive destruction of the livelihood, dreams and aspirations of a section of Indian population.

When Shabana Azmi took up the cause of the slum dwellers in Colaba whom the authorities were planning to relocate, I heard a lot of criticism from my peer group that she did it for publicity and for retaining the workforce from the slums on which South Mumbai depended heavily. Whatever the motives, I think we should appreciate her activism - for it prevented the annihilation of the dreams and hopes of a large number of underprivileged Indian citizens.

Am I saying that the slums must be allowed to exist as they are? No. But the city planners MUST factor in these millions when they do their job. It is not all about constructing a few buildings to relocate them. The authorities should not leave it to a few NGOs and social workers to make an effective relocation of the slum dwellers. In planning and budget allotment, the slums should figure as prominently as the flyovers and the sea bridges that pop up in big metros at an incredible speed.

The civic authorities need to reorder their priorities.

For no city or country can flourish on the ruins of the dreams and hopes of a large chunk if its citizens. No India Incorporated has a moral right to build its empire on these ruins.

Yes. These slum dwellers are citizens of India whom India could not take care of. So, instead of going under, they opted to survive. In the cities.

Once again, I am reminded of what the Gandhi so vehemently warned: India lives in her villages, he said. So take care of the villages and the cities will take care of themselves.

We did not take care of the villages. And if we cannot still do it, the cities must provide for these migrants from the villages. Even if it means we have to face and bear the embarrassment of the naked bottoms and littered street.

Air Travails

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shashi-tharoor/air-farce_b_155363.html

The above article by Shashi Tharoor on the ordeals of traveling took my mind to mine during my recent trip to the US, during which I did a lot of domestic traveling.

I have no business to grumble, I realize. If an international celebrity of Shashi Tharoor’s credentials can be subjected to these travails, who am I to crib, especiall since, at the end of the day, I felt happy and secure at the thought that the aircraft I was traveling in would not blow up mid air.

I was a victim of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inspection twice. I had picked up a couple of serving dishes which caught my fancy at the one dollar shop which I had insisted on visiting. And which Sunny, my husband insisted on not visiting. My son-turned- mediator took us to the shop and I picked up these two ceramic dishes, much to the disapproval of my husband who thought they were cheap, heavy and not worth even the one dollar each cost. Again the mediator son convinced him that ‘we’ (he and his father) should be indulgent with the old lady and her whims. Somehow, the old lady bit worked and I picked up the dishes, knowing fully well everything that Sunny said was true. But, I am the type who gets a lot of thrill acquiring these low cost stuff – fun stuff - exotic but not perhaps the type we’ll leave behind as a cherished legacy to our children.

I took extra care to pack these dishes, as they were breakable. I must say that I am pretty good at it, having had to deal with a lot of transfers across the country with all our worldly possessions. I can proudly say that the damages in terms of breakages were negligible. But then, there was no TSA intervention while transporting things by road from one destination to another in India. On reaching Chicago, on unpacking, I found that one of the dishes which raked up such a domestic controversy was broken. Sunny was around, helping with the unpacking. I refused to look at his face for fear of that triumphant i-told-u-so-good-riddacnce-to bad-rubbish look in his eyes!

In our box I saw that note from the TSA that our box was picked for random checking, and an apology for any damages, including damage, if any, to the lock.

During my return journey to India too, my box was singled out for TSA inspection. This time the damage was to the nail polish bottles which my daughter insisted I take, knowing fully well, on my own, I will not buy them to paint my nails. She bought me enough shades to last till she made her next visit. Fortunately, I had the good sense to pack them in a double zip lock. On unpacking, I found all the bottles stuck together. Apparently, they’d opened all of them to ensure they didn’t contain liquid explosives – but did not take enough care to close them tightly. The zip lock, however, proved its quality by containing the leak within itself.

I wish the TSA has a system which will ensure that the boxes that are randomly examined will be repacked the way they found them. After all, air travelers too have some rights!

But the worst ordeal was at the Boston airport. As I stepped past the security gate, the officer there kept my boarding pass and asked me to sit down. Soon a gigantic lady came with that beeping instrument and told me that I have to be checked from ZERO. I looked out to see my brother and family looking at me very anxiously. I gave them a plastic smile to indicate that I’m not rattled and than looked back at the lady.
“I’ve to check you from Zero”
I didn’t know what that meant.
”Want the screening to be private?”
“Naturally”, I smiled. I was shaking inside, with nervousness and embarrassment. Is it going to be a strip frisking? And why me? The other passengers were just walking past the beeping door and were heading for the lounge.
“Come”, she said. I followed her with no footwear, no shawl. It was terrible. I must confess that I am very sensitive about my feet and the shape of it and always choose my footwear to cover the oddest pair of feet that the creator has ever made. Another reason I’m never seen without my footwear is, I use them to add those missing inches that the almighty forgot to bestow on me. So with my feet flapping like a duck’s and my dress hanging disproportionately long without the well heeled footwear, I walked behind that huge lady, a long long way, feeling very self conscious, thoroughly humiliated, and very sure all eyes were directed towards me. “Well, if this is a terror merchant, I might as well have a good look at her”, the expressions of the Indian passengers seemed to say.

“Have to start from zero, sthat okaye?” she asked. They were two other female officials in the room where the “private screening’ was to take place.
“OK”, I shrugged nonchalantly, elaborately casual.
Then she just ran that beeping contraption superficially over me!! That's all she did!
What all that drama was about, I couldn’t make out.
“I did a lot of traveling during this visit”, I told those officials after they gave me the green signal to go. “This is the first time I’ve been screened like this. Why so?”
“You wanted private screening. That’s why I brought you here”
“I thought I’ll have to do a strip, since you kept saying zero”
I suppose my relief manifested in a form of irritation.
"Tell me, why did I have to be screened like this. Am curious”, I told them
“Where are you from?” (Oh oh, that’s the reason eh? I told myself triumphantly. The cat will be out of the bag in a minute.)
“India”
“What’s the weather like in India?”!!!!!!!!!?????.
I stared at them.
“Monsoons in my part of India”, I replied like an idiot.
“Ooooh, it must be beautiful!’, they cooed.
“Yes beautiful. Beautiful”, I agreed and walked back to collect my accessories and boarding pass.

Raja, my son-in-law told me later that just like the TSA does random inspection of the baggage, they also do random inspection of the passengers. The chosen passenger will have it noted on the boarding pass.

When I got back to Chicago, I looked hard at my face in the mirror. Why was I singled out? A random selection? Is there some system in this selection? Or is it because of me Asiatic origin?

Better still, is it because of my one mile long name of which they couldn’t make out if I was man, woman or extra terrestrial, which should explain why even my baggage was marked out for inspection?

Like I said earlier, getting into the aircraft, i forgot the unpleasant zero experience, and felt that I was flying safe.

Thank You and Good Bye, Sri Mons Joseph, Our Beloved Minister

Another head rolls in this Topsy-turvy world of Kerala politics. The law of nature says that the old order should give way to the new. But in this enlightened state, there is a reversal of this law - New order gives way to the old here. First it was Gnaesh who, some years back, vacated his position as the Transport Minister to accommodate Papa Pillai. Now it is Mons Joseph, the PWD Minister bowing out to make way for P J Joseph, the crooning manthri with a history of having greased his palms during the Plus 2 allotment days.

A few months back another well liked Transport Minister, Mathew T. Thomas resigned in obedience to the fatwa from his party high command.

What these three ministers - Ganesh, Mathew T. Thomas and Mons Joseph - have in common are:

* They are all honest politicians. Difficult to believe such a thing exists, but these men showed that it does exist.

* They don’t believe that the ministerial berth is their birth right. They have a job to do. They believe in doing it to the best of their ability.

* They are performers and delivered during the brief time there were in office. Ganesh was beginning to make KSRTC turn around when his father claimed what he had temporarily vacated till he was cleared of corruption charges. Mathew T Thomas who had the making of a true statesman and a disciplined party man, was in the process of giving a makeover to KSRTC with his innovative ideas. Mons Joseph brought so much transparency into the Dept with so much corruption and scope for corruption, paid up govt’s debts and gave administrative sanction of work running into thousands of crores.

* They left their position of power like the true representatives of the people – without much ado or resistance, and went back to their constituencies in the most dignified manner.

While I feel sad that these men had to bow down to the wishes and self seeking interest of their “stalwart” leaders, I feel happy at the emergence of this new breed of politicians.

I have always felt that God cannot abandon his own country for too long. This new breed of public servants, with their clean hands, willingness to work hard for the people, commitment and efficiency, is the surest indication that the Almighty has planted saviours among us. We, the people, need to identify them and evolve a system by which they are given an opportunity to serve us.

He is King Khan not God Khan: SRK Grilled

Shah Rukh Khan frisked! Interrogated. Earlier, in a case of protocol breach, our former President Abdul Kalam was frisked by an American Airlines officials IN INDIA! Still earlier, Mammooty, like SRK, ran into trouble with the immigration officials in the USA on account of his name.

But the worst was the strip frisking of George Fernades TWICE when HE WAS THE DEFENCE MINISTER of India

And the strategy is the same each time. The immigration frisks, or grills the passangers for hours. The Indian embassy is able to get through to the immigration only after the Indian citizen is frisked to the satisfaction of the airlines or interrogated to their hearts content and certified as safe to enter the USA, and is allowed to leave the airport. India lodges complaints and the US mouths platitudes.

And we Indians become hopping mad. And rightly so.

Hey? Why rightly so?

Given that outcome of all this frisking and stripping and grilling is that there have been no terror attacks on the US soil after 9/11, don’t you think it is worth it, this tacit understanding between the US Internal Security and the immigration officials at the airport to frisk God Almighty himself if He should descend at the US airports?

So, instead of cribbing, India should do what Ambika Soni suggested – return the comnpliment. Be it Bush or Mr. & Mrs. Clinton or Brangelinas or America’s King Khans – go ahead and frisk away to glory. Strip frisk those with names we don’t like. Surely the US cant complain. WE can always say, “How do we know they are not running errands for the CIA, or not carrying hash worth crores in their suit linings?”

Instead of raising such a hue and cry, India should take a leaf out of the American Internal Security practices and be ruthless in implementing them.

No. Not tit for tat. But emulating an uncompromising attitude when it comes to the internal security of the nation.

For that we owe no explanation to anyone.

The Lure of the Spooky World

Just watched The Orphanage , the Spanish thriller / horror film. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

This set me thinking. I have always enjoyed films with themes of the supernatural. In fact, I like them better than the futuristic ones with robots and virtual world and high-tech stuff. Is it because I can relate better to the spooky world which appeals to the imagination than high tech stuff which taxes the brain? Or is it because robotics belong to the realm of possibilities (ugh!) whereas the other lies outside the domain of human control?

And I know for sure I am not the only one. A well taken movie thematizing the supernatural is always a runaway hit. On the small screen, they don’t even have to be well executed. Judging from the number of yekshi serials in Malayalam which have even IT youngsters glued to the TV, one can vouch for the huge fascination the supernatural holds for the highly literate Keralites.

Why so? Do the stories of ghosts, reincarnation or after death existence captivate us ‘cos they cross the rational frontiers into regions unknown, unfamiliar and inaccessible to the much celebrated rational faculty of human mind?

A time was when man believed in the extra terrestrial and their influence on/intervention in human life. But with the onslaught of enlightenment and the invasion of scientific knowledge with rationalism in tow, the supernatural became regions to which the human mind went on luxury expeditions only. But why do we need to do it? Can’t we be satisfied with the unlimited world certified as true by science, and waiting out there to be explored? Why do we have this craving to take these flights of fantasy to a world where no traveler has ventured into or from whose shores no traveler has ever returned?

Why do I love watching Manichitrathazhu ? Why did Boris Kurloff Tales of Mystery comics lure me as a child with their chilling stories? I could never leave The Dracula alone. The book and the various Dracula movies - if executed convincingly – oh, they hold me spell bound. The End of time films are my favourite too.

That I am the rule rather than the exception sometimes puzzles me. This yearning for narratives which lie beyond the reach of science and scientific testing must be a basic human instinct. Why else was The Sixth Sense an unforgettable experience for all film goers. It just missed the Oscars.

Basic human instinct – isn’t that something we can trust, or rather, we'd be foolish to get dismissive about? Hasn’t someone said that the instinctual man, who constantly honed his instincts, was closer to Truth that the rational man?

This basic human tendency to reach out to that which lies outside the purview of the rational mind – is it the outcome of a gut feeling that truth is beyond our reasoning – or rather, there are truths that lie outside the grasp of the rational mind?

Wordsdworth’s words about what happens when we put our corporeal frame( the physical human body to which belongs the cerebral faculties) to temporary rest, comes to my mind:

the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
…………………………
And…….We see into the life of things.

We see into the life of things – the ultimate truth! The ultimate truth is what humans reach out to – and his instincts tell him that in order to get it within his grasp, he must break free of the shackles of reason, intellect and cognition.

I think our fascination for the supernatural is a small part of this liberation project and a manifestation of that felt need to believe that there is more to life than what is defined by the limited range of the cereberal human.

Kerala: Do College Teachers Need A Dress Code?

In many areas, Kerala is a step ahead of the rest of India – but when it comes to dress sense and dress code, she lags way behind. It took a government order in 2008 to permit the use of salwar suit for teachers in school. This order does not cover colleges. So many colleges, particularly private colleges, insist on sari and only sari for teachers.

The reasons cited are many.
o It is the traditional dress
o It lends dignity to teachers & it is modest.
o It helps distinguish young teachers from students

Is sari the traditional dress of Kerala? NO! Mundu and neryathu – or the set mundu as it is now called – comes close to being the traditional dress for the women of Kerala. Among Christians, it is Chatta & mundu. I know of an occasion when a few young teachers in a private institution planned to dress in the truly traditional manner, and came to college in set mundu. They were pulled up by the Principal who sent them back with the instruction never to come to college in fancy dress!

One can imagine what would have been their fate if they’d decided to come in chatta and mundu!

I have a question. Why doesn’t this argument apply to male teachers. Why is it that they can come in trousers or mundu & jubba or whatever they please and take their positions behind the desk without inviting the ire of the management?

Does this mean that it is the woman on whom is invested responsibility of being the custodian of tradition?

About dignity and modesty – well. These are very subjective issues. A well made salwar suit can be as modest and dignified as a sari. And a sari too can be worn in the most undignified and immodest manner. With the ample scope it provides for exposure of the midriff, of the back with deep cut cholis etc etc. I know many people who can convincingly argue that the sari is the most seductive of all dresses!

About distinguishing young teachers from students – doesn’t the same problem apply to male teachers too? Why should only the lady teacher be shouting out her credentials all the time? As for that matter, why should any teacher do it? A good committed teacher does not need the aid of accessories to earn respect from the students.

Am I anti sari? Well, not really. But many a time the sari has landed me in trouble. It once got in the way while I was jumping into a jam packed KSRTC bus, and I fell forward hitting my shin against the step. Ever had your shin collide with the metal beading of the step? That’s the day when I understood the meaning of the idiom ‘blinding pain”. I can quote any number of sari related mishaps, but this is not the time and place for it.

Those who constitue the managements which still cling tenaciously to the sari- for- teachers rule should just once be made to travel by bus in a sari on a rainy day. I’d like to see how they’ll manage the umbrella, the handbag which a teacher must necessarily have and the sari, all wet at the bottom and getting in the way of feet movement and has to be hitched up while clambering on the slippery, wet and dirty steps of the transport and private buses. The latter, more often than not, will have a kili blocking half the width of the narrow steps.

I suggest this extreme step ‘cos no amount of explaining seems to convince these decision makers that sari is the most inconvenient dress for the fast lifestyle of the day, and that there are equally respectable outfits available.

Strange, how people whose concern should be to get the best out of those in teaching profession should be so mulish about dress code for teachers, and spend so much time and energy enforcing inconsequential rules which cause maximum inconvenience to employees.

When man Meets Nature - Munnar III

DO WE REALLY NEED THIS?

DO WE NEED LAYS TO WARM UP TO NATURE?

HUMAN INTERVENTION - AT CHIYYAPARA where the water crashes down in a never ending roar to meet the river

I wish i could post the stench of urine at this spot, that came everytime the breeze blew from some direction .

Lets hang our heads in shame!

Shouldn't we do something about this, and not be just armchair cynics?

When Man Meets Nature - Munnar II (to be contd)

Do follow the tale told by these pictures. The last picture is at Chiyapara, enroute to Munnar.

The story of this waterfall will be concluded in the next post.

God's Indulgence: Munnar . Post - 1

No, these are not paintings. They are real! God's work not man's.

I was not aware that wild majestic beauty untouched by man existed so close to us.

Now i know what the poet meant when he exclaimed 'Wilderness is paradise enow'.

These pictures of Munnar were taken yesterday and the day before.

Mists and clouds blurring the distance between earth an heaven even as you watch them, occasional drizzle, green mountains and rocky mountains, the crystal purity of the sparkling water as it hops, skips, jumps down the rocks laughing with wild abandon, the river flowing by your side all the way, dense forests and large parrot green patches of grass, man's footprints in the form of rows of eucalyptus trees and tea plantations appearing like green velvet from a distance- - - This is what Munnar is made up of.

This and much more - - - -

I have not seen many places of great scenic beauty- but i cannot think how any place can be more beautiful that these mountains.

Nature at her most beautiful best - that's what you see in this paradise situated some 4000 plus feet above the sea.